Some would consider it a freelancer's haven. Others barely noticed a change in management. Fontana Freeport, previously known as Outpost Hesperia is one of the many freelancer bases. From a previous Hellfire Legion installation, it was changed into a Xeno influenced Freeport. This does not sound like the most optimal place for experimentation, unless we are talking about some twisted social study.
While Ren had plenty of bases to start her research (Read: tinkering) at, she chose this hollowed asteroid. Her reasons? Pretty simple.
Renting a hangar wasn’t too expensive here, and with this, she didn’t hinder the capacities of hacker stations.
Rogue guns were fairly easy to source, given the relative close proximity of Alcatraz.
The place was suprisingly quiet. No Rogue brawls, or Junkers trying to help her by taking what they considered scrap.
After just a week, internal hangar bay 3 looked a lot different. There were neatly sorted gun parts in almost every corner of the makeshift workshop. Most of them labeled, too. Cooling solutions, heat sinks, spare barrels, capacitors, the list goes on. It was quite the operation. In the middle of this cascade, was a single Bayonet class interceptor. Most of it in relatively well kept condition, save for a few brand new burn marks. These, unlike the others were not made by the regularly overheating Rogue weaponry she mounted onto the ship. No, these were caused by weapons fire. Something considerably larger than your usual police laser cannon.
On top of the Bayonet, near the cockpit, sat Ren. Tearing out pieces of a gun that was ripped clean off by something. A mix of cusses and curses followed with every clump of metal she got rid of.
"Those are some nasty hits. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one?" A low rumble indicted the hanger access locking, as Stenn glanced around the bay curiously. The mismatch of equipment was about as standard as one could expect to see in a "freelancer" station. For the most part, he was just wondering if it had been worth going through the effort of following back the trail to here. Then again, he hadn't expected to find a half dead ship and a semi-pirate trying to fix it alone.
"This message was from you, wasn't it?" He says, as he overrides a nearby display to project it. Leaning against one of the Bayonets wings, he decides to let the question hang, mostly curious, but also slightly intrigued.
Visitors to this part of the hangar were mostly limited to service personnel and package couriers. "Leave it on the desk." Came the almost automatic response from her, until she glanced back to see the man who has just entered her rented domain. "Superficial damage, no more than an annoying setback." The tone of her usual voice was quite melodic, like deeper notes on an oboe.
"You don’t seem to have delivered anything, so why are you-" She was interrupted soon enough, as her own message was displayed on the centre display. "I really didn’t think an attempted joke at phishing got through. Lo and behold, the rock had inhabitants." Only now did she turn around fully, sitting onto the edge of the cockpit with her legs hanging down from it. The curl of her lips revealing an ever so slight amusement. "It was me. And, what of it?" She was a bit unsure where this conversation might lead, leaving her with a hint of healthy paranoia.
"What of it? Nothing. It told me more about you than you about me. That said, consider it like knocking on a strange door. You knocked, and I answered." The lights flickered as he said it, just for dramatic effect. Silently, he thanked his implants. Glancing around the hanger again, he couldn't decide if he was impressed or dismayed by the state of the ship within.
"Then again, I'm reluctant to introduce myself as a genie just yet. You might ask me to help weld your... weapons... back on to that." A clear note of disdain in the words reveals his disproval of the equipment mounted, and as the lights in the bay stopped flickering and returned to normal, Stenn found himself slowly growing disheartened by the conversation. He had expected some measure of emergency, a hidden message, some level of secrecy attached to the sender of a phishing attempt at what would look like an unmanned asteroid base. Even if it looked like it was just a low level scam, he still harbored some hope that the sender wasn't quite so boring as that.
"Perhaps, the question you should rather ask, is how do you need my help?"
"Oh, I bet a simple data collecting drone intentionally left there told you a whole lot. Especially one that does not interface with the neural net, and anything implanted in it was purposefully put there." She was not amused. Not by a long-shot. The little circus trick earned an audible sigh at best. If anything, she grew a little resentful, spending her afternoon by placing out that little drone, only to get a living solenoid switch turning her hangar into a bootleg rave party.
The weapons themselves looked like your run of the mill rogue Belial laser cannons. Hacked together in a way to be the perfect definition for the term “loose tolerances.” Except, not as rugged as the term implies. The interesting parts were the differences. On the side, there were plenty of these guns unmodified. On the craft itself however, every single piece was tinkered with in a different way. Each design facilitating a different heat management method, some combining more than one approach. Considering the improvement between the versions, the one missing must have been the most advanced product of the quartet.
"Judging from your capabilities, I’m better off not asking you any such. No matter how much the magic lamp is rubbed. I’d just get a couple of faulty lightbulbs." Her previous, pleasant melodic tone was gone for the most part. Replaced with something a bit more monotone as she jumps off the ship, in the direction of the spare gun parts.
"The original intention of the message was to figure out if the station was inhabited. Which, I got to know long before your arrival. More precisely, a second after my silly little message was received." Once near the parts she issued a few orders on a console, transmitted to two simple carrier robots. The machines lugging the parts up on top of the Bayonet. "A shame, really. I could have used that station to do my work in relative peace, without having to pay rent."
"Oh but it told me enough. How to find you. To be honest, the station wouldn't be much good for you. Too many empty rooms and half finished projects." He smiled at her irritation, before continuing.
"Lets start with the basics, why a Bayonet, and why not get a normal repair crew for the damages." He idly flicks one of the barrels, a ringing sound coming from the metal on metal contact. "Of course, custom modification of the weapons would explain that part, but not why you would be out here without support. Did you tune these yourself? There was a period of time where one of the experiments we had run involved bio-coolant. Some of your modifications here remind me of that." He frowns at something about 30 centimeters away, before turning back to the figure.
"In all honesty, I'm quite bored, and its not often people fly that far out to do nothing."
"There was no real reason to mask that data on it. Police and Navy won’t stray that far out to track down a bucket that promised hot single focusing lenses. Other groups wouldn’t care too much either." The two robots soon enough placed the gun back where it should be, with a few precise welds.
"Whenever there’s much damage to the Bayonet itself, I have to get a regular crew to scan the hull through." Her eyes dart back towards the ship as Stenn touches one of the barrels. Slightly possessive when it comes to those guns. "The Bayonet is as close I can get towards something that is quite familiar, yet readily available. Most equipment on board are derivatives of hacker technology, to a degree. Thus, I have more of an idea on how to make them cooperate with my ideas."
Apart from the guns, the shield system itself seems quite off too. It is comparable to the usual heavy fighter emitters, yet weaker in the output. Strapped to it is a secondary generator running some excess juice towards the energy distributor of the weapons.
She was about to walk to a workbench to get some parts, but the conversation distracted her. "It’s a personal project. I would not want anyone else nosing about around it, sharing useless insight on a daily basis. If I wanted to do that, I’d have the ship at a hacker base. Everything on those guns were changed by me. The original versions have a tendency of melting any sophisticated wiring."
"Well, I was quite bored too. Sort of hoped that base was pressurized at least, or functional and empty at most."
![[Image: 0Nnv76v.png]](https://i.imgur.com/0Nnv76v.png)
